Abstract
In the framework of the environmental determinism model this chapter analyses and questions the relation between legal system and accounting regulation as it is presented in the ac-counting literature. The two different legal families, common and civil law, impact differently the ac-counting regulation. Although in recent time the named distinction has gradually lost its relevance, its historical meaning is not questioned. This dichotomy will be used to investigate the relation between law and accounting in the Italian and US contexts at the end of the nineteen-century when both countries were emerging from wars and entering a phase of economic development that generated accounting debate and rules. The aim of the chapter is to highlight specificities emerging from the examination of regulative interventions in the accounting scenario by governmental and professional agencies in a period in which accounting regulation was unexpected and according to models that do not reproduce the traditional common-civil law country categorization.